IBM Spectrum Protect Reviews

We use IBM Spectrum Protect with another product from IBM called IBM ESS. IBM ESS allows us to open up multiple screens of the backup box or the soapbox when doing backups or restores. 

The feature that I have found the most valuable is that IBM Spectrum Protect is highly integrated with IBM ESS. In addition, it allows us to back up our virtual servers directly to take VM snapshots. It runs on Linux as well.

They can include more cloud-enriching features. I would like IBM Spectrum Protect to have the functionality for backing up a VM directly in Azure. I would like to back up a VM directly in Azure without spinning up a Hyper-V cluster and backing up the virtual server. 

I have been using this solution for over five years now.

It has always been stable. We never had any issues with it.

It is definitely scalable.

Their technical support has been excellent. You always get the support that you require.

I have worked with Veeam Backup and Replication, Backup Exec, NetBackup, and Commvault. We switched because we are an IBM partner, and we preferred IBM technology.

The initial setup was quite complex. 

It was set up by IBM. We have six backup administrators. We have two backup administrators internally in our company, and we have four external backup administrators.

It is fairly reasonable as compared to other solutions in the market.

I would rate IBM Spectrum Protect an eight out of ten. It is very robust, stable, and easy to administer. The backup related to the cloud is the only challenge that we have with this product. We're happy with everything else. It is a good product.

It serves a diverse range of use cases, catering primarily to enterprise users with multifaceted workloads. This encompasses the backup and recovery needs of various data types, including workloads, databases, file services, and specific applications.

Incremental backup is highly valuable as it allows for significant time and cost savings. By only backing up changed or new data, there is a reduced need for extensive storage space on the backup server. This efficiency contributes to both time and cost-effectiveness in data protection practices.

Enhancements are required for backing up our virtual environment.

I have been working with it for more than twenty years.

I would rate its stability capabilities ten out of ten. Technical instability in many cases arises from hardware or the operating system. For instance, using Spectrum Protect on a Windows platform tends to be more unstable compared to deploying it on AIX or any Linux platform.

The scalability of the system is exceptionally high, making it suitable for deployment in any enterprise environment. It can be utilized in a multi-site and multi-instance setup, with no inherent limitations. In the present project, we manage a user base of twenty-five thousand individuals and the company operates globally around the clock. I would rate it ten out of ten.

Currently, I would rate the satisfaction level at around eight out of ten. Generally, I am content because as an experienced user, I can pose pertinent questions and provide the specific information needed, ensuring effective communication with support.

Positive

I've occasionally utilized different products, such as the one formerly known as Tivoli Storage Manager. In smaller environments, I've worked with solutions like AXA for NETGEAR and some other alternatives. However, for enterprise-level environments, my primary choice has consistently been IBM Spectrum Protect.

The initial setup is straightforward for simple environments, but in the majority of cases where environments are more complex, it becomes challenging. While beginners can use it, configuring it optimally demands familiarity with the product and a comprehensive understanding of its various options. On a scale from one to ten, I would rate it around seven or eight.

Deployment time can vary, it could take a day or a few days, contingent on the complexity. The process involves installing and configuring hardware, setting up the operating system, managing dependencies to Spectrum Protect, and then installing and configuring the Spectrum Protect service. The most challenging part is gathering all the necessary information for deployment, such as requirements from application teams and network details. Once you have all the needed information, the deployment becomes relatively straightforward. Around ten individuals are required for maintenance.

Without experiencing a disaster, the need for backup may not be apparent, resulting in no return on investment. However, in the event of a restore or recovery requirement, the return on investment can be as high as one hundred percent. On average, I would estimate it to be around seventy to eighty percent.

It can be perceived as expensive since it is designed for enterprise use. If your company doesn't fall into the enterprise category, the costs may be prohibitive. However, the expense varies based on the license model offered by IBM. For instance, if you opt for a CPU-based license model, the costs rise with each additional client. On the other hand, if you choose a license model based on the volume of backup data, the cost increase is not as significant as with the CPU-based model. I would rate it nine out of ten.

I evaluated Time Navigator and NetBackup.

Making a decision on Spectrum Protect should be a thoughtful process, considering factors such as cost, prerequisites, and alignment with your specific needs. It makes sense to carefully evaluate whether the investment aligns with your organization's priorities before deciding to purchase it. Overall, I would rate it nine out of ten.

IBM Spectrum Protect server runs on Linux and collects the backups from the clients. Either direct clients, backup archive clients, or through a proxy in the case of VM, which is TDA.

The most valuable feature of this solution is the centralized enterprise backup.

The solution could be more user-friendly and provide better monitoring. The monitoring should be improved first since it is a higher priority.

I have been using IBM Spectrum Protect for approximately 30 years.

IBM Spectrum Protect is stable.

I have found IBM Spectrum Protect to be highly scalable, it can scale up to 1,000.

I was in the IBM Spectrum Protect support myself and it is high quality.

The installation could be improved, it takes a lot of effort.

The pricing model of this solution is another difficult area, it's very sophisticated in the way they charge. It's based on PBU, which is a type of processor, how, many processors, and you need to put everything into an equation. However, they have different ways of charging or licensing. One way is a back-end volume or front-end volume, which is quite complicated.

I have evaluated Veeam.

IBM Spectrum Protect is very good for high volume enterprise costs. If you are a small to medium-sized business I would choose a cheaper and more straightforward solution, such as Veeam.

I would rate IBM Spectrum Protect approximately a six out of ten for small to medium businesses but for enterprise companies, I would rate it a ten out of ten.

When combining all factors, I rate IBM Spectrum Protect an eight out of ten.

We use it for normal file system backups, database backups for Microsoft SQL, and VM image backups. We also use it for the backup of the Sybase database, which is an important backup for us. Sybase is the database for the SAP ERP systems. These are business-critical systems.

IBM doesn't provide its own data protection agent for Sybase. Therefore, we are taking Sybase backups by using the built-in API from SAP. We utilize Sybase ASE, which contains the API and allows us to connect with the TSM of IBM Spectrum Protect. We are currently on an older version, but we are going to upgrade to 8.1.9 very soon.

The backup of Sybase databases is the most valuable feature in the existing environment.

They have got the most documentation out there on the internet for its software protection. The documentation is excellent, and there are a lot of blogs, websites. Because it's still one of the oldest products out there for data protection, there are also lots of people who have a lot of experience in using this solution.

It is not easy to manage like other products in the market. It is okay only if you are command-line driven. Even though the operation center is there, it doesn't provide a single view of everything. You have to, for example, use TSMManager on top of it, which gives you a far better management capability, but it is a third-party product. Its management needs to be improved. There should be an HTML or graphical interface. 

It is a very difficult product. For example, you have a backup policy where you want a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly policy standard. It is an old kind of system where you have to keep retention for daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly backups, which is very difficult in IBM Spectrum Protect. In other products, in a matter of five minutes, you can configure such a policy. In TSM, it takes you one, two, or three days because you need to configure a node for each of them. If you have 250 nodes, you have to configure each node for daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly retention. If you have 1,000 nodes, it is going to take you ages just to configure and register the nodes. You need to configure the schedule and the CAD daemons or services, depending on whether it is a Unix or Windows OS. Unfortunately, it is a very long and drawn-out process. You have to stop and start the services for changes to take effect. This is a very difficult part of TSM in IBM Spectrum Protect.

To configure a backup policy, I should be able to select the daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly options in one screen and finish it. After that, everything should happen in the background. All the backup products in the market already do that, and they are very simple to manage. This particular part of this solution has really been a major pain area for us, and unfortunately, we could not find a workaround. There is nobody at IBM who can give us a way to configure all this easily through a GUI or even scripts.

I have been using this solution for the last 12 years.

It is stable. Stability-wise, IBM Spectrum Protect is among the best. It doesn't crash like Data Domain. It is not unsteady, and it doesn't become unstable. Once it is configured correctly on the right hardware, it will run pretty well.

It is definitely scalable. We are a service provider for another company, which has about 2,000 to 3,000 users. 

For its deployment and maintenance, we have 18 team members. We have 24/7 support. We have a couple of L3s, and the rest of them are L1s and L2s. 

Their technical support staff is not the best. They are among the lowest in the whole market. They never want to come for a WebEx meeting and always ask for logs. When the logs don't reveal anything, they ask for traces, which is a big hassle again because you have to do many things. After you upload the traces, they are not able to find anything. The case goes on for weeks. From weeks, it goes to months, and sometimes, you have to escalate to just get something simple fixed. 

IBM support is very difficult. They have improved everything. The documentation is excellent, but when it comes to the support, they just don't want to get into a WebEx meeting. They don't want to help you online. Commvault or other companies would just jump into a WebEx meeting, simply look at this stuff, and quickly fix the problem in no time. I don't know why they are resistant to getting on a WebEx meeting. No other backup vendor out there says no to this. It may be because they have a lot of work, and they're busy, or they don't feel that they can solve it quickly enough. It could be because the product is like this, and the support can't support or fix it quickly.

They should be able to quickly get to the root cause, but they take forever to get back to us on certain issues. We can read a lot of literature out there. There are a lot of pros out there, but the problem is that the support guys themselves should be like those guys. Their certain messages are so cryptic that we don't even know what to do. They are hard to understand. I ran into a migration problem the other day, and they were just asking for more logs, which was causing issues in production because the pools were filling up. Technical support has to be really quick these days.

In the past, I have extensively used Oracle's RMAN backups. I have also used snapshot and FlashCopy Manager a lot for critical systems.

In our own data centers, we had IBM Spectrum Protect, and then we migrated away from them. We are now only supporting those customers who are running this environment. If you look at some of the companies where we are supporting IBM Spectrum Protect, they have been an IBM shop for very long, mostly because their systems are on IBM. Most of their infrastructure is IBM and their software is IBM, so they will naturally go for IBM Spectrum Protect to protect their infrastructure.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward.

The initial implementation was done by a third-party vendor who was an IBM partner. I don't think it took long. It took a few hours.

We have capacity licensing. We use the front end. The capacity licensing is pretty okay on the licensing price. I used to use the old PVU-based licensing in the early environment, but now we use capacity-based licensing.

The IBM shops would use it because it fits very nicely into an IBM environment, but even with the VM capabilities, it is more difficult to configure and support as compared to other solutions in the market. If you look at other solutions, even your IBM ProtecTIER, for example, would be a data protection appliance. I could mix and match technologies, but I think other products are easier to manage. 

There are many third-party products that do it all. TSMManager is really excellent for managing a multi TSM server environment. If you have got 10 or 20 TSM servers, you cannot manage them natively. It is difficult to switch from one to another. You can always connect them and then jump from one to the other. You have that option, but it is easier if you have one UI sitting on top of them all, like a single management layer. IBM does not provide it. I have heard something is coming out in version nine or ten, which is going to change a lot of things, but I am not very sure.

I would rate IBM Spectrum Protect a seven out of ten. There are many good things about it, such as stability, reliability, and scalability, but it is tough in terms of manageability and things like that. Its support is also not good.

For me, the fact that we can do inline deduplication and compression with Spectrum Protect itself, where before we had to use other products.

It simplifies our backup environment to one product. Cost is also much, much cheaper because you not only save space, because you're deduplicating and then compressing on the storage end. You are also saving on the licensing, because the license is after deduplication and compression.

Right now, we are in it for container pools and such. The ability to have an active-active, where you no longer have to go in and do modifications if your primary site goes down and your offsite needs to do the primary backups.

It takes a lot of manual work to go in and update all the records and run a bunch of scripts. I would like to see that becoming more automated and with more intelligence in Spectrum, so it can then detect what is down.

When my client comes to you to back it up, he not only comes to you for restores, but it should be able to do a backup without having to modify the state of the node registration.

There are features that it came out with, such as the directory container pools, which brought it back up to where other products we were using are currently at. Namely we were using EMC Avamar in our remote sites, because they were much more RAM friendly. Now, in the past year and a half with the directory container pools, version 7.1.3, brought TSM up to that level. I'd like to see that performance increased.

I can't comment on stability. We are only now doing testing. It was stable, but now we're rolling it out into production. We are just starting to get our feet wet in production sites.

We have it in two to three sites right now, and we're deploying it in about 10 to 15 sites. We should actually be up to almost 30 sites by the end of this year.

We haven't had any need for support. We've been working directly with our technical sales rep for any problems.

The first criterion is the product. Second, customer service is one of the top of benefits to have, especially the technical support. They need to have knowledgeable people to talk to without having to always keep restating what your problem is. It gets kind of tedious and boring. Having that more streamlined and having more access to developers and the higher-level support when needed is my top requirement.

The initial setup was straightforward. Just follow the blueprints. They are very well written and that works pretty well.

We evaluated EMC Avamar, which we were using. We were using TSM (previously TSM, now Spectrum) in our data center, but not in our remote sites. We actually moved away from them five years ago, because Avamar was better. We evaluated Veeam, CommVault, NetBackup, and others.

Do your research. Don't just look at one product. We evaluated three or four different products.

Our primary use case is for little backups, such as our exchange databases.

It helps insomuch as that it is a run solution. The issues that I've had with IBM are few and far between. Every time it restores, even though it may use tapes, there are no issues.

We really like that it just works and haven't had any problem with it, whatsoever.

It is very flexible in terms of schedules for different types of retentions. We have different policies for images, for audio files, and for user files. We have policies set up for something lasts for 15 years, or five years, or some for only two years. It can put up many, many schedules for different types of retentions. It's awesome.

The user interface needs to be improved. It is mostly a command line and you're stuck in a terminal most of the time. They have been moving over to a graphical interface, in part, but it still has a way to go in terms of ease-of-use. The commands are awesome but you can't really remember all of them. If the whole thing goes graphical then you don't have to remember obscure commands to run stuff, or set stuff up.

The configuration section needs some work done, especially with the day-to-day usage of setting up schedules and policy domains, etc.

The licensing needs to be simplified, changing it from "per core" to "per socket". This would make it much better.

This product is robust, and stability is the best part. It doesn't really fall over unless you want it to, which is the main thing.

As we are currently migrating to Veeam, I can tell you that I had less sleepless nights with the IBM solution. Veeam is very dependent on the health of the cluster, and if it isn't running well them Veeam doesn't perform too well.

In terms of scalability, it doesn't matter how much you throw at it, it just handles it. The product doesn't require that much in terms of resources. There is no overhead CPU consumption unless you're doing deduplication and stuff like that. It is not heavy, resource-wise.

I am the main backup administrator and the only one who is using this product. I run it for the company. Currently, we are backing up between forty and fifty virtual machines on Tivoli. If I want to leave and let the schedules run then I have a second IT person to monitor it.

The usage will not increase because the solution is being phased out, and all of the backups are moving over to the new product. Before the end of the year, it will not be used anymore.

I haven't really needed any technical support because I haven't had any major issues with the product itself.

I did speak with them about tape issues but that's more hardware than software. The experience was easy and prompt, as they came out the next day and fixed it. It was awesome.

We did not use a solution prior to this one.

The initial setup is straightforward. It's a basic setup and you just need to know what has to be done. Your pools and everything, it just has to point to that directory and it's done.

Our deployment took about a day. We last upgraded in 2015 to V7, and it handles backups of all our file systems, our images, our recordings, etc. The deployment included setting up these policies.

I took care of the implementation and deployment myself.

The licensing fees are on a yearly basis, which for us it is about R400,000 (approximately $27,000 USD). The additional costs depend on your backup technology. For example, if you are using tape technology then it depends on the type of tape and how many you purchase every month. It could cost about R10,000 (approximately $650 USD), or so. The pricing is a little expensive for our current employer, so they want to move to a cheaper solution.

Currently, pricing with IBM is based on sockets and the cost depends on the machine or server. Even if you don't have anything hectic running on the host, you are still paying for the whole host. This is something that should be improved.

If it wasn't for the price we would most likely still be using it.

This solution was in place when I arrived. However, we are currently in the process of migrating to Veeam but this is a cost consideration rather than one of functionality or performance.

The best part of this solution is that it just works.

I would rate this product eight out of ten.

Primary use case is backing up data in order to restore our customers, if needed. The performance right now is okay.

Our on-premise infrastructure is comprised of two tape libraries (3500), each staffed with about 55 TS1150 drives, and approximately 5000 cartridges. The snapshots are taken on NAS filers, as they are EMC VNXs, and Spectrum Scale. It is there that we take the snapshots. For buffering, we have some V7000s in place, but all in HPE Blade enclosures. We previously had virtual tape, but not anymore.

We do not lose data. That is why we are using this product and have a backup in place.

• We can scale. Today, we have an average backup volume of 100TB a day. 
• It is reliable; it works. 
• We have a good cooperation with IBM. 

The features should be a little bit closer together. 

If you take Spectrum Protect into account, and you have it along with restrictions to Spectrum Archive by means of LTFS, this is also something which should be made better within the overall product's program.

The stability is very nice. The only thing that IBM should improve with the program is the licensing. We have a little engine in place. However, if you use Power PC and you have big engine in place. then you have some restrictions to the versions. This should be remedied. 

This would be a real improvement: The product to gather storage on the one hand, and storage for backup on the other hand.

It scales until the next frame must be purchased.

The growth plans are given by the user. In science, you never know what the next step is. We are struggling against newer experimental setups. This is great for the scientists, but if you double the resolution size for microscopy, it ends up with a lot of more data on our side. However, we serve our scientists, so we just purchase new.

The support levels at IBM are very good.

The initial setup and infrastructure were done within days. It was an okay process. There was nothing negative about it.

The license model that they have at IBM, which is due to volume, from a certain volume onward is not the right license model. Right now, we have a better license model. This is the model that we had at the end of last year.

There was a call for tender for an overall storage renewal, and IBM easily won out versus its competition. 

If you are looking for a reliable solution, it is okay. If you are looking for just backing up some smaller clients in a small business unit, so there are probably other competitors around. 

We use this solution to monitor our backup tasks and to manage our backup. It also does retention on archives.

We use it for all of our backups.

It is easy to implement and restores very quickly.

It's very simple.

With the SPVE you can migrate from IBM to a different storage box. For example from IBM, you are going to Dell or NetApp. If you want to carry it over, you can.

You can do restores very quickly. You can mount a drive and restore it right from the drive.

Their plans need to be upgraded. It's a 1.0 and needs to be taken to a 1.4. Other solutions have more; Veeam for example, has 2.0, as well as Cohesity, and CommonVault.

When it comes to virtualization in IBM, it's not perfect.

We are going to switch from IBM to Veeam because Veeam is more accommodating to virtual environments. You can restore your Active Directory or your object to your group policy with Veeam.

I have been using IBM Spectrum Protect for three years.

We are using version 8.1.

It's very stable.

IBM Spectrum Protect is scalable. There are archives on the flash that goes into a queue, and when it's available, it goes into flash and retains it for seven days then into the normal storage.

We may require support or we may do it ourselves.

Technical support is good, they are responsive. Once you submit a ticket and depending on the level of priority from level one to level four, they will respond to the ticket with a day to the same day to resolve the issues.

The response time is normal. If you compare with Dell at the same priority level, it may take a day or two to get back to you.

I would rate technical support an eight out of ten.

The initial setup was straightforward. When you log in you can explore further. It will provide you with an explanation and how to do restores on the system. 

It will also let you know if you are backing up a C client or backing up a normal VM.

It's not complex. It's easy.

IMB does all of the updates.

We did no use an integrator or consultant. We completed the installation ourselves.

We are paying for support and maintenance on a monthly basis. It is approximately $124.00 USD per month for the entire company.

We are currently reviewing Veeam. After we have installed it, we will know more about it and some of the similarities.

TSM is moving to the cloud and will be much easier.

IBM Spectrum is coming out with a new version with the option of using Kubernetes, it's called IBM Spectrum Protect Plus.

It's solid, it helps you protect the IDMS and helps you restore your VMware data and the types of data on your VM.

I would rate IBM Spectrum Protect a seven out of ten.